Cambro products wouldn’t be what they are today without the people who make them. In our Meet the Camily series, we introduce you to some of the people that make your favorite products possible. From manufacturing to distribution to corporate, every Cambro employee has a story to tell. Today we’re taking you to our North Carolina Facility in Mebane to meet Alejandro “Alex” Talamantes.

What is your position?

North Carolina Plant Manager, overseeing manufacturing, production, engineering and maintenance.

How long have you worked at Cambro?

30 years.

How did you get your start with Cambro?

“I was going to college and I took a job over the summer working at Cambro in the utility role getting cartons for packers, cleaning up areas and machines, stuff like that. Toward the end of the summer, I moved up to a material handling role and I just started growing from there. I’ve done many different roles at Cambro in quite a few different departments.

What do you enjoy about Cambro?

“What I like about coming to Cambro every day is the challenges of different stuff that occurs. Also, I’ve always been involved in different aspects of creating and/or developing products and departments. That’s always very interesting when you’re helping start up a new department or testing new molds or tooling—that’s an interesting aspect of it.”

What’s the most interesting project you’ve worked on?

“I was a part of the team that implemented a new product manufacturing technique and that’s something I am proud of. It was a very, very challenging task that’s very interesting and very different than what I’m used to because my background is injection molding.”

Five years ago, Cambro asked you to relocate to North Carolina. How did you make the decision to accept?

“I have two daughters and a wife. I’ve been in California most of my life and I thought it would be a good change for my children to look at different aspects of the United States and experience different cultures. I talked it over with my wife and talked it over with my children. They didn’t really want to come, obviously they were teenagers in school, but they decided to give it a shot.”

What do your kids think of North Carolina now?

“My older daughter, when we relocated, she was a cheerleader at her high school and she really didn’t want to move over to North Carolina because of friends and what she had established there. Her first year in North Carolina, it was tough for the whole family to adjust, but she joined the cheer team here at the high school, made some friends and so did my younger daughter, and they like it here now to the point where my older daughter decided to stay in North Carolina to go to college.”

Describe the culture at Cambro:

“Even as we advance technologically and all our different growth with products, the base of us being a team-oriented company, the leadership is important. We try to stress the important thing about being professional and being respectful as we work with all employees. Even though we’ve grown, in my years here we’ve grown a lot, we’ve always tried to keep that culture of being team players being respectful of everybody and treating everybody as well as we can.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: ADRIANA DESIDERIO IS THE DIGITAL CONTENT MANAGER AT CAMBRO.